Today AMD announced not only its seventh consecutive quarterly loss, this time $1.189 billion, including a $920 million write down of ATI operations, but also the resignation of CEO Hector Ruiz. According to the announcement, Hector is handing over AMD’s reigns to Dirk Meyer.

The handing over to Dirk was no surprise as we discussed it back in December 2007. What was a surprise, though, is that it has finally occurred, since at that time there was no sign of Hector leaving anytime soon.

RickGeek put it perfectly back in May when he pondered why Hector hadn’t already been run out of the building, or as he put it:

“Why Hector Ruiz, AMD’s current CEO, hasn’t been run out of town with his arms tied to a heavy block of wood is beyond me.”

We’ll see if Dirk can turn things around for AMD. I’m sure he’ll be allowed to have a few underperforming quarters, but I think his immediate goal should be avoiding quarterly losses in the BILLIONS!

Reader Comments

it's about time, how this guy lasted this long is beyond me. I predicted his being run off over a year ago.

I don't think the bleeding is any where near over for AMD either. They are only slipping farther behind in their core businesses and they still have a HUGE manufacturing problem.

They hit their all time low stock price the other day, below $5 There market cap is now ~$3B (they paid ~$5B for ATI). They desparatley need some new manufacturing and new fabs cost ~$2B each these days. This is a disaster of epic proportions. Business schools will be studying this royal screw up for decades to come.

AMD will be in some form of bankruptcy in 2009, I'm somewhat amazed they've made it this far loosing that kind of money and having such negative profits.

hodar

Over 4 years I predicted this. I USED to work for Motorola, and watched as VP Hector Ruiz shuffled 120 engineers out of their cube city, so he could build a private office with a private kitchen, conference room, health club, sea water aquarium viewing area and shower area. Engineers were being laid off while Mahogony aquariums with exotic fish were being installed in Austin, TX.

As Motorola moved into negative territory (eventually selling their ENTIREsemiconductor branch) – Hector Ruiz ran things 'his way'. I often said that if anyone other than a Hispanic minority had done the same thing – they would be fired within a week. It's simply not politically correct to question someone who is in a position of authority, and is of hispanic descent.

Then he took a job at AMD. How many Billions has Ruiz cost AMD? $12 Billion? $15 Billion? AMD spun off their entire FLASH memory line, because Ruiz couldn't manage his job (Spansion), their embedded controller industry is gone (Geode), now their ASICs are gone and the AMD CPU's are missing goals. AMD fired and dropped their entire motherboard support group. AMD used to make their own motherboards, with AMD North and South Bridges. Ruiz killed that support structure over 3 years ago. Today, AMD is 100% dependant upon nVidia, LSI, MSI and Via for ALL of their new products, as well as supporting existing products.

Gee, thanks Hector. You know, I can be far less arrogant, make far more intelligent decisions and work for a fraction of the price of Hector. I sincerely doubt I will botch the company as badly as Hector has – but alas ….. I'm not a minority.

So, now we ask – Why was a CEO allowed to drive a company this far down? How did he get the job in the first place? How many loyal employees did AMD lay off, people who had worked years for AMD – working overtime for free; to drive innovation into the marketplace, only to be laid off when the chip hit production?

If there is any reason why Hector Ruiz was

1. hired

2. allowed to keep his job

3. allowed to drive the company into near bankruptcy over a period of 6 years, without having 'guidance' from the Board of Directors

other than "Hector Ruiz" is one of a very small group of hispanics in managment roles – I'd really love to hear it. This looks like a lesson on why Political Correctness not only kills industries, but kills teamwork, innovation, progress and incentive.